"We are not amusing ourselves; we are trying to catch some fish for
dinner," said Kate. "Could you wait out by the red buoy while we get a
few more, and then should you be back by noon, or are you going for a
longer voyage, Captain Sands?"

"I was going out to Black Rock for cunners myself," said the cap'n. "I
should be pleased to take ye, if ye'd like to go." So we wound up our
lines, and took our basket and clams and went round to meet the boat. I
felt like rowing, and took the oars while Kate was mending her sinker
and the cap'n was busy with a snarled line.

"It's pretty hot," said he, presently, "but I see a breeze coming in,
and the clouds seem to be thickening; I guess we shall have it cooler
'long towards noon. It looked last night as if we were going to have
foul weather, but the scud seemed to blow off, and it was as pretty a
morning as ever I see. 'A growing moon chaws up the clouds,' my
gran'ther used to say. He was as knowing about the weather as anybody I
ever come across; 'most always hit it just about right. Some folks lay
all the weather to the moon, accordin' to where she quarters, and when
she's in perigee we're going to have this kind of weather, and when
she's in apogee she's got to do so and so for sartain; but gran'ther he
used to laugh at all them things. He said it never made no kind of
difference, and he went by the looks of the clouds and the feel of the
air, and he thought folks couldn't make no kind of rules that held good,
that had to do with the moon. Well, he did use to depend on the moon
some; everybody knows we aren't so likely to have foul weather in a
growing moon as we be when she's waning. But some folks I could name,
they can't do nothing without having the moon's opinion on it. When I
went my second voyage afore the mast we was in port ten days at Cadiz,